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Dystopian Dating?

In the episode’s concept, Frank (Joe Cole) and Amy (Georgina Campbell) are both new members of a dating program that pairs them up for dinner. So far, so conventional—but there are signs that something is different. Two bouncers lurk menacingly on the periphery, providing some sense that the dates in this world aren’t optional. And Frank and Amy both have handheld devices that show them how long their relationship is going to last, which in this case is 12 hours. Self-driving buggies transport them to a cabin, where they’re given the option to sleep together, or not. Things must have been “mental” before “the system,” they agree. Too many choices, total option paralysis. Too many variables. Too many unpleasantries if things go wrong.

It feels at first like this is going to be a satire about snowflake millennials who don’t have the emotional maturity to actually date like adults. But there are other questions hovering around: Why do Frank, Amy, and all these other attractive young adults live inside some kind of sealed dome, Truman Show–style? Why, given that Frank and Amy have so much obvious chemistry, isn’t the system pairing them up for longer? What happens if they opt out?

“Hang the DJ,” directed by the TV veteran Tim Van Patten, has the artificial-world sheen of “Nosedive,” with its brightly colored cabins, soulless restaurants, and ubiquitous talking devices. It also has moments that feel like a critique of Tinder and its counterparts, like the scene in which Amy proceeds through a sped-up montage of different relationships and sexual encounters as if outside her own body, detached and dehumanized. But the crux of the episode is a broader thought experiment: Frank and Amy are actually simulations, one pair of a thousand digital versions of the real Frank and Amy, who in actual fact have never met each other. Their avatars are a way for a dating app to test their compatibility, and whether or not they elect to try and escape from the dome together decides whether they’re a match. In this case, 99.8 percent of the time, they are.

This show reads like straight predictive programming. Young people will soak this up and agree to a future of dating that this show is programming them to accept. It definitely has the dystopian feel of 1984 and Brave New World. Good luck to young people of the future because this is going to be reality.